The professor Jeremy Adelman is very pleasant to listen to, and very organized and competent. Good course which stresses a less European-centered view of world history, and more of a centralized topic of the "road to globalization".

Notes on 56 Lectures I Watched in This Course:

Columbus and the New World

1500-1700 Indian Ocean Trading system

Da Gama, Pepper and World History

Portuguese Indian Ocean Empire

16th Century Colonialism Fueling European Violence

Global Food: European Sugar, Caribbean Plantations, African Slaves

16th and 17th Century Merchant Trading Companies

17th Century Interdependence of Trade and Investment

Francis Drake and Mercantilist Wars

The Apex and Erosion of the Mughal Empire

The Treaty of Westphalia as the Hinge of Modern History

The Influence of Silver on the Ming Dynasty

Political Reverberations of Ming Consolidation

18th China Resurgent as Qing Dynasty

18th Century Tea Trade, Leisure Time, and the Spread of Knowledge

Cook and Clive: Discoverers, Collectors and Conquerors of the Enlightenment

Strains on the Universality of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment, Empire, and Colonization: Burke vs. Hastings

Enlightenment or Empire

18th Century Land Grabbing

The Industrial Revolution and the Transition of Non-Renewable Energy

The Seven Years' War and Colonial Revolutions

Napoleon, Spain, the Colonies, and Imperial Crises

Human Rights and the Meaning of Membership within Societies

Napoleon, New Nations, and Total War

The Ottoman Empire's 19th Century Tanzimat Reform

The Early 19th Century Market Revolution

The Global Upheavals of the Mid-19th Century

The Train, the Rifle, and the Industrial Revolution

Transition in India: Last of the Mughals

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 and Its Ramifications

Darwin's Effect on 19th Century Ideas

Factors Which Led to the Solidifying of Nation States

1868 Japan: The Meiji Restoration

1871: Germany Becomes a Nation

North American Nation-Building

19th Century Changing Concepts of Labor

The Benefits of Comparative Advantage

Migration after the Age of Revolutions

Creating 19th Century Global Free Trade

The Expanding 19th Century Capitalist System

The Second Industrial Revolution

The Closing of the American Frontier

Africa's Second Imperial Wave

Early 20th Century American Imperialism

1894-1905: Japan's Imperial Wave in Asia

Rashid Rida and 19th Century Islamic Modernization

19th Century Pan-Islam and Zionism Movements

19th Century Global Export-Led Growth

Indian Wars and Mass Slaughter of Bison

The Suez Canal's Effect on the Malayan Tiger

1890-1914: Savage Wars of Peace

1900-1909: Russian and Turkish Dynasties

1899-1911 The End of the Qing Dynasty

The 1910 Mexican Revolution

The Panic of 1907

11 People I Have Learned About in this Course:

Akbar (1542-1605)

Mughal Emperor from 1556 to 1605

the third and greatest ruler of the Mughal Dynasty in India

greatly expanded

established a centralized system of administration

adopted policies that won him the support of his non-Muslim subjects

Wang Yangming (1472-1529)

A Chinese idealist Neo-Confucian philosopher, official, educationist, calligraphist and general during the Ming dynasty

believed each moral virtue is naturally embedded within each person, but they have to be cultivated

James Cook (1728-1779)

British explorer, navigator, cartographer, achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian islands

captain in the Royal Navy

three voyages

Robert Clive (1725-1774)

British officer who established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company in Bengal

credited with securing India, and the wealth that followed, for the British crown

together with Warren Hastings he was one of the key early figures in the creation of British India

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Eighteenth-century English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book

she argued that women were not naturally inferior to men, but appeared to be so only because they lack education

she suggested that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason

she died at the age of thirty-eight, ten days after giving birth to her second daughter, an accomplished writer herself, as Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Irish statesman who served in the British House of Commons remembered for his support of the American Revolutionaries and opposition to French Revolution

his opposition to the French Revolution led him to become the leading figure within conservative faction of the Whig party

attempted to impeach Warren Hastings of the East India Company for personal corruption

praised by both conservatives and liberals of the 19th century, today he is viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Marquis de Pombal (1699-1782)

18th-century Portuguese statesman and de facto head of government, notable for his swift and competent leadership in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, he implemented sweeping economic policies in Portugal to regulate commercial activity and standardize quality throughout the country

was instrumental in weakening the grip of the Inquisition

introduced many fundamental administrative, educational, economic, and ecclesiastical reforms justified in the name of the Enlightenment and instrumental in advancing secularization

Warren Hastings (1732-1818)

The first Governor-General of Bengal, from 1772 to 1785, was accused of corruption and impeached in 1787, but after a long trial he was acquitted in 1795

the letters and journals of Jane Austen and her family, who knew Hastings, show that they followed the trial closely

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566)

A Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar who wrote "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies", a chronicle of the first decades of colonization of the West Indies which focused particularly on the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples

became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians

as one of the first European settlers in the Americas, he participated in the atrocities committed against the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists

in 1515, he reformed his views, gave up his Indian slaves, and advocated, before King Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, on behalf of rights for the natives

In 1522, he attempted to launch a new kind of peaceful colonialism on the coast of Venezuela, but this venture failed, causing Las Casas to enter the Dominican Order and become a friar, leaving the public scene for a decade

he continued lobbying for the abolition of the encomienda (a grant of a specified number of natives of a specific community to a specific Spanish colonizer), gaining an important victory by the passing of the New Laws in 1542

the remainder of his life was spent at the Spanish court where he held great influence over Indies-related issues

in 1550, he participated in the Valladolid debate in which Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued that the Indians were less than human and required Spanish masters in order to become civilized. Las Casas maintained that they were fully human and that forcefully subjugating them was unjustifiable

Guillaume Raynal (1713-1796)

French writer and iconoclastic Jesuit who in 1770 wrote the popular and controversial "L'Histoire des deux Indes", which examined commerce, religion, slavery, and other popular subjects from the perspective of the French Enlightenment

it indicated that empires, especially the Spanish and the Portuguese, in colonizing the East and West Indies, were turning their backs on their fundamental purpose of the Enlightenment and were thus eventually doomed to corruption and decline

the book principally examines the East Indies, South America, the West Indies, and North America

the full title of the book was "L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes" and was a ten-volume set and one of the first global histories of the world

the final chapter comprises theory around the future of Europe as a whole

it was translated into the principal European languages

its publication in France was forbidden in 1779

the book was burned by the public executioner, and an order was given for the arrest of the author

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)

A prominent African in London, freed slave who supported the British movement to end the slave trade

known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa

his autobiography, published in 1789 and attracting wide attention, was considered highly influential in gaining passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended the African trade for Britain and its colonies

his last master was Robert King, an American Quaker merchant who allowed Equiano to trade on his own account and purchase his freedom in 1766

he settled in England in 1767 and worked and traveled for another 20 years as a seafarer, merchant, and explorer in the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies, South and Central America, and the United Kingdom

17 Vocabulary Words I Learned in this Course:

Daimyo, n. [DIGHM-yo] the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings, but subordinate to the shogun, the Daimyo era came to an end in 1871⇒ "Seventeenth century Japan was similar to 17th century Europe in which you had a large land area beset with civil wars, regional warlords and ruling households called Diamyos struggling for power."

argot, n. [AR-go] a characteristic language of a particular group, as among thieves⇒ "It was argued that they were "uplifting the native" and "bringing inferior peoples into civil society" even if they didn't want to as it was for their own good, this was the political argot of the time."

brackish, adj. (of water) slightly salty, as in river estuaries.⇒ ""In the hollows of the plains are ponds or lakes of fresh and brackish water.""

disarticulate, v. to separate, disjoint, divide, sunder the joints of, or disrupt the logic of⇒ "Nineteenth century steam, canals, and railroads functioned importantly as instruments to connect up parts of societies which were previously disarticulated from each other."

entrepôt, n. [EHN-treh-poh] a place where goods are stored or deposited and from which they are distributed⇒ "Throughout the 19th century, merchant bankers played an increasingly important role in mediating the relationship between the supply of capital and demand for capital, and the most important entrepôt for capital was London."

equipoise, n. balance of forces or interests⇒ "As the bison were slaughtered and removed from the Great Plains, they were replaced by cattle and cattle ranching, and cities began to emerge on the plains to induct them into a national economic system, Chicago becoming in a sense the bovine capital of the world defining a new balance in the relationship between the city and the country each specializing in a task in relationship to other regions. Humans had coexisted with this macrofauna for centuries if not millennia, but the intensification of land use for commodity production upset this delicate equipoise."

eschew, v. to avoid or shun⇒ "Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic state identity, Akbar strived to unite far-flung lands of his realm through loyalty, expressed through a Persianised culture, to himself as an emperor who had near-divine status."

feral, adj. in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication⇒ "There was a careful, managed balance of forces between Indian peoples and native, feral herds"

galleon, n. a large, multi-decked sailing ship used primarily by European states from the 16th to 18th centuries⇒ "With the opening of trade through Manila and the arrival of the Manila galleon from the New World, we begin to see the direct tie from the mines of the Andes and Mexico to Chinese demand."

ineluctable, adj. unable to be resisted or avoided, inescapable⇒ "Some parts of the world still had empires which were in a steady but ineluctable state of long disintegration."

jute, n. a long, soft, shiny vegetable fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads, grown in East India and used for making mats, paper, gunny cloth⇒ "Even though many mining and cotton businesses in India were, in fact, Indian owned, cotton was not the only major export: the production and export of jute and tea from Bengal were also becoming larger markets, in part due to the penetration of of railroads into the Indian continent beginning in the 1840s, and these were dominated by British businessmen."

lacquerware, n. objects decoratively covered with a clear or colored wood finish that dries by solvent evaporation or a curing process that produces a hard, durable finish, sometimes inlaid or carved⇒ "With the increased use of silver and the growing economy, the Ming upper-class took an interest in new products such as lacquerware from Japan."

politico, n. a politician whose conduct is guided by considerations of policy rather than principle⇒ "Otto von Bismarck, a shrewd and calculating politico who was the strong man of the strongest, single regimes of the German confederation of states, Prussia, was able to promote the idea of a Kaiser, an imperial ruler who would issue his dominion over all of German-speaking peoples from a capital, a national capital, in Berlin."

porphyry, n. a hard igneous rock containing crystals of feldspar in a fine-grained groundmass⇒ ""Towards the Andes, the shingle gives place to porphyry, granite, and basalt lavas, animal life becomes more abundant and vegetation more luxuriant.""

redoubt, n. small, often temporary defensive fortification⇒ "Especially in the areas of the world where old villagers were used to their subsistant, communally oriented livelihoods, these are the last redoubts of that system."

sepoy, n. derived from the Persian word sepāhī, was formerly the designation given to an Indian soldier in the Mughal Empire, yet its most common application historically was the term used by the British East India Company for an infantry private, special trained Indian native British units at the service of the East India Company to service as the local agents of control for the firm, their uprising in 1850s led to what is known as the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

venal, adj. showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery⇒ "The U.S. press painted Spain as a venal and corrupt Old World empire."